PSYC 3415

This class was one of the best, if not the best, classes I've taken in my 3.5 years at UVA. Professor Jaswal is super caring about his students, passionate about the content of the course, and always available to help. This was the first time he taught this course, which I happened to learn on the last day of class. I figured because of how well-constructed this course was that he had been doing it for years. Though we did not get to conduct studies with real-world participants due to COVID, Professor Jaswal still managed to make this course worthwhile and valuable. There was a great balance between learning developmental psychology and learning research methods.

At the start of the semester, I was worried about the workload, but you will quickly learn how to manage the workload and the work itself is very engaging. There are two worksheets (~30 minutes each), 3 exercises (~45 minutes each, lowest score dropped), 10 essays (sounds like a lot, but it's really not bad--3 are dropped, so you only really need to do 7 if you want. They're also super short, 5-paragraph essays. I ended up doing 9 of them and got a 100% in this section of the grade), a midterm (pretty easy and well-designed), and 2 projects (one about half group work and the other completely group work and you do almost all of it during class time. I usually hate group work but because so much of it was done during class time, it was actually really nice). I know it sounds like a lot, but it's very well spaced out throughout the semester so it is extremely manageable.

The TA, Zoe, was also extremely caring, knowledgable, and available to us. She was super helpful during office hours and in class. She clearly put in a lot of effort into TAing this course based on how quickly we got grades back and that she was always in attendance at class and paying attention.

Overall, I highly recommend this course to anyone who needs to take an RM course for the Psych major. I don't know if it's available to non-majors, but if it is, I highly recommend it for everyone!